About

We are raising funds to give 12 year old Ollie the treatment he needs to save his life.

He was diagnosed with a brain tumour on the 19th May 2015. He underwent an 8 hour operation where only half of the tumour could be removed. Following this he lost the ability to speak, swallow, stand, walk or use his right hand. He has had to re-learn all of these things. He underwent a further 2 brain operations, followed by 3 cycles of chemo, 34 sessions of radiotherapy and then a further 7 cycles of chemo. He maintained an amazingly positive cheerful and polite manner throughout. The nurses would ‘argue’ over who got to care for him!

We had started to dare to believe we had beaten cancer, when we got the devastating news that he had badly relapsed and that his condition was considered “incurable”. However, we have one last hope, a treatment known as “The Vienna protocol” or “MEMMAT”. It is the only credible option for Ollie and he needs two years of treatment at a cost of £440,000. He faces yet another a gruelling year, but Ollie has come through so much and is so loved.

Latest Posts

Thank you to everyone who came to Ollie’s service yesterday. Your support and love were and are very much appreciated by all our family.

Special thanks too to the small army of lovely people who gave so much to make sure the whole event ran smoothly. To avoid missing anybody out, I won’t name names, but please accept our heartfelt thanks. Over 500 people came and It was a very fitting send off for our little angel.

There is a memorial page to Ollie and if you have any photos of Ollie, or any memories to share, we would really appreciate it if you left them there. It is painful that we will never be able to make any new memories with Ollie, so we would like to gather any that you have. xxx

In response to so many wanting to light candles for Ollie and to leave messages in the book of condolences, St Michael & All Angels church in Aston Clinton will be open for the remainder of this week from 9am to 7pm. ... See more

St Michael and all angels church in Aston Clinton will be open today from 08:30 till 19:00 if you would like to go and light a candle for Ollie. There is also a book of condolences for written prayers and tributes. xxxx ... See more

Ollie has fought a long, brave battle, but last week a doctor looked me in the eye and told me that our child was dying. To say it was like being hit by an express train doesn’t even come close. Ollie was deeply unconscious and nobody expected that to change. The full “end of life” system kicked in and we made all the preparations we could. But despite the long hell cancer has already put us through, it still had one more torture to dish out.

Four days after slipping into unconsciousness Ollie briefly opened his eyes, but they didn’t move or apparently see anything. The following day his eyes fully opened and we were excited to see them moving and tracking us around the room. Over the coming days he continued to recover consciousness, but there was something obviously wrong. Ollie’s incredible strength and fighting spirit may have yet again brought him back from the brink, but even he couldn’t stop the extensive damage being caused to his brain by the ever growing tumours and that damage is now catastrophic.

Brain cancer is a truly evil disease and now we find ourselves in our very worst nightmare. We have lost “Ollie”, but his strong body carries on. This is a state that could continue for weeks or possibly even months. Nobody knows for sure although the final outcome is inevitable. Ollie is comfortable and blissfully unaware of the situation. He is well cared for, in no pain and surrounded by love. The destination that we were heading to only last week remains the same, but the cancer has ensured that we will take the hardest, most difficult route to get there. ... See more

Following a very difficult few weeks and days, I am heartbroken to report that Ollie has suddenly deteriorated further. On Tuesday he slipped into unconsciousness and although in the past he has recovered from similar attacks, this time it feels very different. He is at home, comfortable in his own bed and surrounded by the love of his family. A team of wonderful nurses are helping us to care for him and he is peaceful and not in any pain. Ollie has proved us wrong before, but we have to be realistic. We do not expect him to regain consciousness.

Thank you for your support and all the lovely messages. I have read them all to Ollie. xxxx ... See more

Ever since Ollie relapsed back in 2016 we have been sharing this horrendous journey with you. Your incredible support has been hugely important to us and has enabled us to pursue every possible treatment. There have been times when we were confident and hopeful that we were going to beat cancer, but cancer is an absolute swine of disease and has fought back hard. The effects of the tumours on Ollie’s brain are becoming all too clear and the good days are now very much outweighed by the bad.

Ollie & I managed to get back to Germany two weeks ago and there they did tests to see if the experimental immunotherapy was having any effect. I received the results of those tests a few days ago and although they were impossible for a layman to interpret, they did say that there was a “good response”. For a long time doctors have been saying Ollie was in far better condition than they would have expected from his scans, now we are seeing Ollie in a really poor state, while being told the immunotherapy is “working”. It’s really hard to know where we are.

This week I am meeting our private oncologist to decide what to do next. We have been offered to return to Germany for more treatment, but currently Ollie is in no fit state to make the journey.

Ollie’s strength has made coping with cancer over such a long period of time far easier than it could have been. For periods of time, some short and some long, we have been almost able to pretend that it’s not happening and just push on with whatever medication or treatment is being tried at the time. It is only when another medical appointment or scan comes along that we are forced to pull our heads from the sand and face reality. We then make a decision about what to do next, form a new plan and then plunge our heads back into the sand while waiting to see if it works. Recent weeks have been strange in that the lack of medical appointments and treatments has enabled us to live an almost normal life, ignoring the cancer that we know is still there. But then came last week.

On Monday we were back in Harley street for an MRI scan that would tell us if the immunotherapy Ollie had been receiving in Cologne was working or not. Scans after immunotherapy are hard to interpret, since tumours can swell due to immune response giving the impression of tumour progression while they are in fact in the process of being destroyed. Knowing this, we did not panic when we were told that the scan showed more tumour and more spread. After-all apart from a little tiredness we could see Ollie was in rude health and attending school every day. Indeed our doctor was very surprised at how well Ollie looked. He said if he had seen only the scan he would have expected Ollie to be in a poor state.

The scan was couriered out to Cologne to get the professor’s opinion and on Friday we finally received a call. In his opinion the scan shows disease progression rather than immune response. He still wants us to go out for tests for a more accurate diagnosis and to see if another immunotherapy drug might work, but this has been a hammer-blow to us. It is so hard to reconcile the stream of bad news with how well Ollie is. We can only hope the professor is wrong, since this is the first time this treatment has been used for Ollie’s cancer type. We are going to try and keep our hopes up, while enjoying our time with Ollie and searching for our next plan. Ollie & I fly back to Germany this week to help in that search. ... See more

We’d like to say a massive thank you to Liz, Jan, Trudie and Caroline from Lucy Clark Scottish Country Dance Club and the Berkhamsted Strathspey & Reel Club for organising a Scottish country dance in aid of Ollie’s fund. 65 dancers from the above clubs and Oxford, Maidenhead, Gerrards Cross, London and Birmingham danced away to Ian Robertson’s Scottish Country Dance band and raised an amazing £585! Thank you all so much. We really appreciate your thought, support and hard work.

http://www.lucyclark.org.uk/?p=2353 https://www.berkhamstedreelclub.org/home ... See more

A charity dance in aid of ‘Ollies Fund’ will be held on Sunday 24 September from 2.30pm till 6pm at Wendover Memorial Hall, Wharf Road, Wendover, Bucks HP22 6HF.